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When You Hear His Name
unexpectedly,
long after you have claimed
it wouldn’t mean anything, you know
you have found the one name
you can never say,
never even bear to hear
even if it is now someone else’s name,
a neighbor’s child
and his mother snapping it at him
like a whip.
You try to make that sound just
a white sheet
the wind slaps
on the taut line. But you become
that line
holding everything above
the earth, stretched
house to post and back
again to house. Or you are
the post, placed
only to hold
the laundry up, keep
the line straight. You are not
the house, not a thing
someone can enter.
from House Without a Dreamer (Story Line Press, 1993)
Winner of the 1993 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize
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